My claim to Entrepreneurship!

Image by bbcworldservice via Flickr

Today I came across a post on trak.in about "The anatomy of an entrepreneur" , and though I haven't read the original report in full yet, I am hooked to the report and would like to put forward my claims to be an entrepreneur. Firstly somewhat off-topic, I had became deeply interested in Psychology after reading "Anatomy of human destructiveness" and whether I became a good psychologist or not, I have managed to put together a good blog on the same after reading that decisive book that has affected my life to great degree; and though I had become interested in starting my own venture some time back, and this report is in no way a turning point or I would credit as being a seminal influence, it is timely in the sense that I can relate to it and find solace in the fact that I fit the profile of an entrepreneur to a T. And going by my track record, you can be assured that I may fail as an entrepreneur, but I'll hopefully be able to create valuable content for other like-minded folks as I venture on my fools quest , by sharing my experiences and knowledge by means of this Web-Squared blog.

So what are the findings of the report? As summarized by Arun at Trak.in:

Here is your Typical Entrepreneur

* He is from a middle-class or upper lower-class background, and very few come from backgrounds of extreme wealth or extreme poverty.
* He is usually well educated, with only 5 percent or less having a bachelor’s degree.
* He likely to be better educated than their parents were, with half his fathers and a third of their mothers having at least bachelors’ degrees.
* He performed well in high school and in college, with the vast majority ranking average or above in their respective institutions.
* He necessarily does not come from families of entrepreneurs; slightly more than half are the first in their families to launch businesses.
* On average, he tends to be the middle child in a three-child household.
* He is significantly more likely to be married and have children when they launch their first businesses.
* He is far more likely to have worked for an employer for more than six years than to have quickly launched their own businesses.
* His primary motivation for launching a business are to build wealth, to own his own company, and to capitalize on a business idea that he has.

And what is my claim to applying for the entrepreneurial tag?

I am reasonably middle-aged (ya to me 33 is middle-aged), from a middle-class family background, reasonably well-educated (B. Tech from IITD) , better educated then my parents (they both have masters in their subjects; but they are educators; I am an engineer:-) , from a family background where literally no one deep down the line of ancestry had even dreamed of being an entrepreneur; had performed well in high school ,  not so well in college (never had the ganda fighter spirit) , married and having a child; worked for an employer for more than 6 yrs; total industry experience close to 11 yrs; and my motivation to launch my own business is to capitalize on an idea and to be my own boss (making wealth is secondary).

Also, the non-factors are pretty pertinent- the inability to find  employment has never been a factor and never will be- I just wish I was more lucky and had got more encouragement from F&F to start my venture early, but it is never too late! Also, important to note is that even this entrepreneurial group is fragmented in two sub groups and I clearly belong to the late blooming group rather than the group of entrepreneurs that knew they would start their own company soon/eventually, even while in college.

So what domain I am planning to work in? It is the web domain, more specifically social web/ semantic web and perhaps the right time to share another relevant report I discovered today (still not read fully) about the social media landscape in India. Do let me know , by means of comments, whether you would like this to be a purely Tech focused blog, or wont mind an occasional business angle being discussed/ touched upon!

Angel Investment: what you need to know!

Image via Wikipedia

As a wannabe web squared entrepreneur, I have been getting myself familiarized with the business aspect of running a venture and  have been trying to find more about funding fundamentals.

This blog post at Both sides of the Table blog is a nice introduction to the issues involved in angel investment and whether it makes sense to have convertible debt angel funding or priced  or series A round of funding.  The article is excellent and the discussion in the comments section is just great. the take home for me, is that do not dilute too much equity in lieu fo getting angel money as VC's may look negatively to that - no motivation for founders- and also try to get money in the form of convertible debt as far as possible- but most importantly - and what was emphasized at this weekend's Proto.in pune event- go for angel investors who provide much more than money- business contacts, experience and wisdom.

More nuggets of wisdom available at the source.

Proto.in Pune edition : the startup ecosystem

Proto.in, sixth edition happened in Pune this time and was an event full of glamor and geeks. While the on stage Verdanchi motorcycle's custom motorcycles set the stage rocking, and the demo of 3DSense by TouchMagix added magic to the show, the geeky cavitation bubble reactor by HyCa or the innovative English Seekho concept by Enterux solutions kept the audience engaged and awed.

The event started with a discussion on Intellectual Property Rights and it was revealing how entrepreneurs themselves and how IPR experts had different opinions- while the IPR expert Prabhu focussed on mapping the domain in terms of existing IPs and how one can innovate and protect,  the entrepreneurs on stage and in audience were more concerned with the costs involved in litigation and protecting ones IPRs. To me, the take home was map the territory, innovate in the space available, get IPRs and then leave it to good faith that others would respect your IPRs. If someone broaches your IPR, at least on the start-up phase do not go after them aggressively , but focus on executing the idea more.

This was followed by Ganesh Natrajan's keynote address focused on how government can help startups. He encouraged people to think of govt as a 10 billion dollar company that has schemes and funds for startups especially those focussed on sectors like health, education etc. He also revealed how industry bodies like NASSCOM are not there for the big players only, but it is up to the startups as to how to best make use of them.

The segment that followed was the meat of the show- the startup showcase featuring 14 startups - 2 in automobile, 4 in education, 2 in software , 3 in mobile and internet and 3 outliers that defied classification.

Some new concepts that appealed to me included the mobile-based English Seekho srvice, that perhaps was inspired by IDEA mobiles 'what an idea sirji' series of advertisements and involved using freely availbale on net IVR and voice recognition systems. The other concept which I believe may have some future if applied correctly was the Queen Bee concept of Vigyaapan Technologies, the idea being to identify the influencer (by taking the most connected/chatty person as a proxy) in a network and them trying to influence the influencer for viral marketing and tipping point effects. However, the reliance on CDR information regarding who talks to whom and how many times, seemed to me very naive and prone to errors. There is much scope for improving the algorithms here, but the idea itself is pretty good.

Image via CrunchBase

Post-lunch the focus shifted to funding the startups and the Mumbai Angels gracefully stepped in.  In a riveting panel discussion, the differences between different stages of funding- seed, angel, venture etc was clarified. It  was enlightening to know what angels look for while evaluating a business proposal and deciding to invest- passion, skillset, financial viability, but most importantly felxibility and adaptability- opennness to modfiying one's business strategy in response to changing environmental landscape.


Subsequent to this was a very boring and mundane talk by a Microsoft person, followed by a Facebook Developers Garage- which again did not live up to the hype , but was far better than the Microsoft session. I know that sponsors come with strings attached, and it is good that their sessions are scheduled at the end- one could see many person leaving politely while these end sessions were going on.

Overall it was a good experience, but indeed maybe it was me, with my usual reticent nature, but somehow I at least was not able to network a lot during that event. In the next proto I hope to not only befit from the formal events, but also from informal networking and schmoozing.

Web Squared genesis

I have a psychology and neuroscience blog and I have a poetry blog, but in my day job I am a software engineer   and have been following the web2.0 trends for quite some time, and feel that I am at a stage where I can add to the conversation and have an outlet for my web fascination, so the launch today of Web Squared, a blog where I will be writing about all things technloglical and web related.

To start with I would like to share two great articles. The first is the O Reilly article from which the Web Squared term originates. The second is another great article by Gaurav Mishra that highlights the 4 C's of Social Media.  Do let me know what you would like me to cover in this blog!